In this installment, Ratchet and Clank must pursue Vendra and Neftin Prog, a brother-sister duo who attempt to bring their race into the universe, with disastrous effects. The game is shorter than most installments, and serves as the Grand Finale of the Future series.

... for now, at least.

Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus provides examples of:

Action Bomb: One of the creatures on planet Thram (referred to as a Bursting Blekko by the hint screen) will charge towards you and detonate the large growth on its back.

Assist Character: Mr. Zurkon returns, and even brings his wife and son into the mix if leveled enough.

Attack Its Weak Point: The Plasma Striker returns, with it's ability to display and hit weak points for additional damage intact. In this game, however, you can purchase upgrades to increase the amount of extra damage that is done. One upgrade even slows down time when zoomed in, allowing you to use the sniper more effectively without needing to keep away from the enemies.

Background Music Override: Firing the RYNO VII or the Winterizer will change the background music to "Night On Bald Mountain" or "Jingle Bells", respectively.

Bag of Spilling: While he did lose a lot of upgrades throughout the series, Clank loses his Thruster Pack upgrade in this game, which is jarring because in nearly every other game he had it from the start.

Baleful Polymorph: The transformation weapon in this game is the Winterizer, which turns the enemies into snowmen.

Bling-Bling-BANG!: Like the first game, upgraded gold versions of weapons can be purchased with gold bolts. Oddly, they're still referred to as "Omega" weapons.

Canon Discontinuity: Not the game itself, mind you, but the museum in Meridian City has no evidence that the events of Size Matters or Secret Agent Clank ever took place; this officially renders the two spinoff games non-canon.

Combined Energy Attack: A downplayed example: the Zurkon family have an upgrade that will allow them to charge a shot together.

Continuity Cavalcade: Meridian City museum contains many things, from creatures that enemies could be transformed into in past games, to a room dedicated to the Groovitron (which also contains replicas of the Valkyries from ACiT), to an interactive replica of the Biobliterator.

Credits Montage: The first half of the credits (before you gain control of Nether Clank) show images from throughout the Ratchet & Clank Future series.

The Comet Strike (throwing the wrench) is done by holding L1 and pressing square, rather than holding R2.

This is especially bad once you get the Hoverboots: in ACiT, boosting with the Hoverboots and preparing for a Comet Strike are both R2, meaning that if you were boosting, you would throw your Omniwrench. In this game, using the Hoverboots is still R2; however, this is to use them, rather than just boosting. This may lead to some confusion for veteran ACiT players who try to throw the Wrench while Hoverbooting and then wonder why they came to a dead stop to swing the Wrench instead, since they probably weren't holding L1 at the time.

Gadgets are mapped to their own buttons, rather than being equipped with the D-pad.

Darker and Edgier: This game seems to have a more spooky atmosphere than usual, and many of the planets visited have been evacuated thanks to being haunted by Nethers. In addition, the Progs are plotting to release an Eldritch Abomination into the Polaris galaxy from another dimension, and Cronk and Zephyr are Killed Off for Real.

Disc-One Nuke: The Fusion Grenade, once it hits V3 and becomes the Fusion Bomb, which explodes into Pyrocidic Nitroballs. It gets better when you use your Raritanium to increase the amount of Nitroballs that fly out.

Played straight with The Plumber, who is revealed to have survived the destruction of the Nebulox 7 when Ratchet receives a message from him after finding a RYNO holo-plan.

Dungeon Bypass: On Planet Thram, you have to meet Neftin to come up with a plan to get Vendra back and banish the Nethers. To get to where you need to go for that mission, you have to get 10 Gargathon Horns and give them to the Smuggler to get the Hoverboots. After this, you can go and solve a light puzzle segment to get to your destination... or you can collect 30 more Gargathon Horns and give them to the Smuggler, which gives you access to jetpack fuel, and just fly up to where you need to be.

The Family That Slays Together: Leveling up Mr. Zurkon to level 2 will cause his son to also appear when you summon him. Get Zurkon and son to level 3 and Mr. Zurkon's wife will also appear whenever you activate the weapon.

Flunky Boss: Appears so often that it would be easier to just list the exceptions: The Voltanoid, and... Yeah, that's it.

Foil: Vendra is this to Ratchet; both are the last of their kinds and deal with the issue in separate ways.

Fluffy the Terrible: Vendra calls the Nether Leader "Mr. Eye" in one of her audio diaries. Justified, as she's a child when she meets him, so either she started calling him "Mr. Eye", or he introduced himself as such.

Genre Shift: The game turns into a gravity puzzle platformer during Clank's Netherverse segments.

Go-Karting with Bowser: Ratchet is allowed to compete in the Thugs-4-Less Destructapalooza even though they've been hired to kill him. The Thugs even give Ratchet prizes when he wins battles.

Gold-Colored Superiority: Once you enter Challenge Mode, you can use both bolts and Gold Bolts to buy the Omega versions of your weapons, which allows you to level them up to Level 6 and gives you a few more Raritanium upgrades.

Hoist by His Own Petard: The Nether Blades were a weapon created by Vendra when she was a child. The upgrades version, the Prog Blades, was modified by Neftin and bears the twins' name. You can end up using this weapon against Neftin himself later on. There's also the "An Eye for an Eye" Skill Point, which requires you to defeat the Nether Leader using only Nether-based weapons.

Hover Skates: Ratchet uses a pair of hoverboots to speed around and jump off ramps.

I Gave My Word: Neftin promises that if Ratchet and Clank save Vendra and help her defeat the Nethers, he'll turn himself in to the police for the murders of Cronk and Zephyr. At the end of the game, he says, "A deal's a deal," and heads to jail along with Vendra (though the latter needs to be carried off by her brother, and she isn't exactly pleased with being forced back into imprisonment).

Interface Spoiler: On Thram, there's a vault that requires 6 keys, but inspecting it will give you a mission telling you to find 5 keys, tipping the player off that something's up. Sure enough, the Smuggler has the last one, and wants all the Gargathon horns before he'll part with it.

Jet Pack: Sadly, the Thruster Pack is missing from this game. However, one of the new gadgets is a Grummelnet Jetpack that allows you to fly anywhere... as long as you don't run out of fuel.

Lighter and Softer: Somewhat Zigzagged: While the atmosphere of the game is definitely darker than the previous ones, the way the plot is handled is more like a cartoon, if not a dark cartoon at that, rather than the heavier stories of Tools of Destruction and A Crack in Time.

The description for the Nightmare Box (a weapon that summons the nightmares of your enemies) says that you can use it to exploit the carpool lane.

Similarly, the description for the RYNO VII (the seventh iteration in the line of Infinity+1 Guns) says that it makes a killer quiche.

New Game+: Challenge Mode from the older games returns. However, the bolt multiplier only goes up to x10 instead of the usual x20. However, now there are sound cues to tell you when your multiplier increases or disappears.

No-Damage Run: Each Clank Netherverse level has a skill point for beating it without getting hit.

Non Standard Game Over: There's a minor one in the first level. If you don't jump onto the Thug ship when it tries to ram you the second time, it comes back and tries again. If you don't jump on that time either, you get a short scene where the Thug ship blows up the structure you're in, and declares that he's going to get a bonus. Then the game reloads your checkpoint.

One Time Dungeon: Certain sections of planets Yerek and Silox - along with the entirety of the introductory level - can't be accessed again after completion. Thankfully, none of the collectables or Skill Points are in these areas.

Opening the Sandbox: On Planet Thram, you originally only have access to one area on the planet; however, after getting 10 Gargathon Horns, you can get the Hoverboots, which allow you to jump off of ramps to access new areas with more Gargathon Horns, and collecting 30 more to give to the Smuggler gives you access to Jetpack fuel, which opens the rest of the area and more Gargathon Horns.

Orphanage of Fear: The orphanage the Progs were at seems to have been unpleasant at best; Vendra's holo-diaries mention that she and Neftin don't have any friends and the adults don't care that they're being bullied.

Our Ghosts are Different: Due to all the work the Progs have done to weaken the barriers between this world and that of the Nethers the sector is considered haunted. It turns out that Robots do have souls or at least ghosts in the stinger when Cronk & Zephyr's ghosts show up at the end. Judging by their comments on picking up women at the robot cemetery, they're not and isolated case.

Vendra Prog, while not exactly tiny, is certainly very small compared to her brother, and in the climax of the game, uses her telekinesis to throw the colossal Nether Leader back through the portal leading to the Netherverse.

Pre-Order Bonus: Pre-ordering this game gives you the Volcanox Armor, which gives you a 5% damage reduction. There's no other way to get the armor.

Real Is Brown: Parodied with the "Doom and Gloom" filter. The graphics don't become that much duller, but the bloom is increased to ridiculous levels.

Real Men Wear Pink: The Nether armour is the most powerful armour in the game. It's also bright purple.

Rewarding Vandalism: In addition to bolts coming out of everything you break, there are a few Skill Points that require you to smash various things. One of them is even called "Vandal".

Rise to the Challenge: In a couple of occasions on planet Silox you must escape from rising water. Which is incredibly funny given that Ratchet can still officially swim AND has an O2 mask (as the section out in space in the first level proves), meaning that rising water shouldn't even BE an issue except for the fact that Insomniac is refusing to add swimming back in. Made even funnier when Ratchet is saying "That was a close one" as if he's forgotten how to swim completely.

Robot Me: One arena challenge features the Prog Bot, a robot duplicate of Neftin Prog.

Announcer: Our engineers built the Prog Bot as a practice robot for new thug recruits, and it looks like Neftin because - well, who wouldn't want to get a chance to smack around their boss?!

Roboteching: The Warmonger/Peacemaker has an upgrade you must surround with bought upgrades in the Raritanium Upgrade menu that lets the rockets do this.

Sequel Hook: Clank takes the broken Dimensionator in the very last cutscene for an unknown reason, despite knowing that it's too dangerous to use.

Ship Tease: Towards Ratchet/Talwyn, specifically Talwyn saying Ratchet & Clank are all she has left after Cronk & Zephyr's deaths, and Ratchet telling Clank that he's not sure if he'd use the Dimensionator to join the Lombaxes, as there's more for him out there than with his people, whilst glancing at Talwyn.

Unwitting Pawn: Mr. Eye and the rest of the Nethers don't care about Vendra at all; they're simply using her to enter the world.

Video Game Flight: The Grummelnet Jetpack gadget allows you to fly anywhere. Except you need to fill it at a fuel station first. And not all planets have fuel stations. And the fuel depletes the more you use it. And one planet has "No-fly Zones" that will automatically remove all your fuel.

Weapons That Suck: After the Vortex Grenade upgrades to the Singularity Grenade, it gains the ability to suck in enemies.

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